Swiss beach volleyball pro Leo Dillier has publicly come out as gay. In a video posted on Instagram on Friday that runs a little over three minutes, the 25-year-old explains why this step took him so long to take and why he’s making it now. “Hello, I’m Leo, I’m a beach volleyball pro, and I want to come out today,” Dillier begins the video.
The native of Aargau has long been among Switzerland’s best beach players and captured the Swiss championship in 2022. He is aiming to participate in the 2028 Olympic Games. Just the day before, for him and his partner Luc Flückiger, the Beach Volleyball European Championship in Poland had ended, where they reached the round of 32. On the tour, Dillier usually competes alongside Marco Krattiger.
“Being gay is often equated with weakness”
“It’s a topic that has occupied me my whole life. In elite sports, coming out is still difficult,” Dillier says in the video. He says he never quite fit the image expected of athletes in high-performance sports: “There is in this construct of elite sport neither left nor right — so an athlete has to be this way in order to perform. That challenged me a lot, because I didn’t quite fit in, because I was a little different.”
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In addition, the beach volleyball player addresses a demeaning attitude toward homosexuality in elite sports, especially among men: “Being gay is often equated with weakness.” That mindset prompted him to hide repeatedly. “It took me a long time to accept that I’m different and that I can love who I want,” Dillier adds.
“I hope I can inspire other people today”
With his coming out, the athlete says he wants to be a role model for younger competitors—something he says he himself lacked. “When I think back to my time about ten years ago — I was 15 and fighting with this a lot — I would have wished for a role model in elite sports that I could identify with. There wasn’t one back then. I hope I can inspire other people today,” Dillier explains.
The 25-year-old also points to the situation of queer people in other countries where homosexuality is not only culturally taboo but also criminalized — up to the death penalty. He wants to engage more with where being gay could become dangerous for him in the future, and in Switzerland he sees himself as legally privileged.
Numerous colleagues congratulated him on his decision in the comments beneath Dillier’s Instagram post. Volleyball coach Lucian Hofstetter wrote: “You are more than good enough. The fact that you still have to refer to it as ‘courage’ in this context today is the real problem.”
